“I truly feel like this partnership saved my business.”

Ryan Paul, owner and head performance trainer at New Athlete, a highly specialized training facility with two locations in the Pacific Northwest, reflected on the impact that partnering with the Universal Speed Rating has had on his business.

With over 20 years of training experience, Ryan and his team have been training athletes in athletic performance and physical therapy seeing good success since New Athlete was opened in 2001.

Even still, Ryan knew there was a greater opportunity to take New Athlete to the next level as an organization.

Since becoming a Universal Speed Rating Speed Lab in June of 2022, New Athlete has seen impressive results including:

• Business Growth: Opened a second facility, completed over 200 new athlete assessments and closed 2 new youth team consulting deals
• Revenue Increase: Revenue has increased 60% year over year
• Athlete improvement: Hundreds of athletes have improved on field speed and New Athlete has hosted 5 youth camps with 220 athletes in attendance

Learn more about becoming a Speed Lab here, or keep reading to hear how New Athlete was able to transform their business.

The Story of New Athlete

Founded in 2001, New Athlete has been well known in the Vancouver, WA community for years now.

This is in large part thanks to Ryan’s willingness to try new things, and not strive for mediocrity.

The New Athlete team works with youth athletes all the way to the professional level, across all sports.

They conduct private training, rehabilitation and physical therapy, as well as small group and team sport training.

Ryan had built a successful business at New Athlete. So why become a Universal Speed Rating Speed Lab?

“I’ve been training athletes for 21 years” Ryan said…

“We’ve had good results. We’ve been able to help a lot of athletes get better, play faster. But, I knew there was another level we could get to. I knew there was more out there I was missing.”

He continued…

“It’s easy to take a freak athlete and let the freak athlete test really well and then you just assume what you did got them the results they displayed. I had certain athletes seeing ridiculous results and certain athletes would just see average results. It was dependent on the type of athlete coming in vs the system producing results across the board. I knew I needed to change this if we were going to continue being successful.”

Why New Athlete Chose Universal Speed Rating

This is when Ryan discovered Les Spellman from Spellman Performance, another speed trainer with some traction in the industry.

“I helped train a tight end for his pro day the offseason before. The next offseason he told me he was training with his QB and a guy named Les Spellman.

At first I was angry he was training with someone else, so I wanted to find out what made Les so special. I started following Les, I checked out his work and could tell he was onto something.

When he announced the release of the Universal Speed Rating a few months later, it was the last straw. I knew this was the type of partnership I needed that would propel New Athlete forward. I applied to become a USR Speed Lab the next day.”

How Universal Speed Rating Responded

After joining as one of the first Speed Labs in 2022, Ryan and the New Athlete team started seeing results right from the jump.

“Three weeks into becoming a Speed Lab we were seeing results immediately. I knew back then that we were just scratching the surface of what we could do.” said Ryan.

It started with learning the Universal Speed Rating’s systems: Test, Prescribe, Monitor.

This involves testing athletes on a frequent basis, giving every athlete a Speed Lab Profile that shows insightful data based on acceleration, power, and sprint specific strength and mobility.

From there, programming is recommended after the speed lab profile identifies the athlete’s physical and technical needs.

Finally, monitoring the athlete’s progress involves determining frequency, using test data to get loads, intensities and focus areas. All of this data is tracked in the Universal Speed Rating so coaches, athletes, and parents can track progress and compete with athletes across their local area and the entire country.

“From the beginning of the partnership, I knew we were just scratching the surface of what we could do. Ever since I’ve started implementing these systems, our training has kicked up another level. We’re seeing elite results consistently, whether it’s a high level athlete or an average athlete. The results are all there.” — Ryan Paul

Learn more about partnering with the Universal Speed Rating here.

The Results

Typically training in 6–8 week intervals, it’s not uncommon for Ryan and the New Athlete team to see an increase of 1–3 MPH for athletes of various sports and backgrounds. See some highlights below:

The results aren’t strictly limited to athlete performance though. Ryan has had the opportunity to connect with other Speed Labs across the country, building relationships in the industry, bouncing ideas off one another, and hearing from other performance coaches what has helped them improve as coaches.

The Speed Lab network allows for plenty of collaboration with like-minded coaches that want to see their athletes succeed on and off the field.

From a business standpoint, New Athlete has increased their revenue by 60% in year over year growth since partnering with the Universal Speed Rating, and Ryan believes much of that can be attributed directly to the partnership:

“If we didn’t become a Speed Lab, I don’t know where our business would be. The support they’ve shown from a brand awareness standpoint — it’s helped get athletes through the door, it’s helped us close 2 of our team consulting deals and a lot of our success in the growth we’ve seen over the past year can be attributed to the Universal Speed Rating’s impact.”

By running events and seeing consistent athlete improvement, other parts of the New Athlete business have been unlocked as well. New Athlete has seen an uptick in interest in the facility with over 200 new assessments completed, has grown their following on social media, as well as in their website (see below).

What’s next?

We asked Ryan Paul what’d he say to anyone considering becoming a Universal Speed Rating Speed Lab. Here was his response:

“I know that every gym and every trainer is a little different. But if you partner with the Universal Speed Rating, if you allow it to work the way it’s supposed to, you’ll be able to generate more revenue, produce consistent results, grow brand awareness, and further drive more athletes to you. Don’t just look at it as a “good speed system”. There’s so much more to it, and truly I feel like this partnership really saved my business.”

If you want to see transformation in your business, we’d love to talk with you about partnering together.

For Ryan, becoming a Universal Speed Rating Speed Lab “saved his business.” We want to help you achieve this same success.

To learn more about becoming a Universal Speed Rating Speed Lab, schedule a call with a member of the Universal Speed Rating Team here: Schedule a Speed Lab Partnership Intro Call